Whicker: Daniel Franco begins walking the road to recovery

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Boxer Daniel Franco has made such quick and glorious steps in his recovery that his family can allow themselves to anticipate the next one. Daniel had two brain surgeries and was in a medically-induced coma following a fight last month. (Courtesy photo)

RIALTO >> Late last week Daniel Franco used a walker. He moved down the hall of the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

A few days later he ditched the walker and attendants kept him upright.

On Tuesday he walked without help.

He can have chocolate ice cream, although not much, since the vocal cords haven’t sorted themselves out and his windpipe is vulnerable. The sounds he makes are raspy and guttural, but they wind up as words, sometimes off-color. His mom, Teresa, jokes that those are the product of recessive genes.

Daniel can text. On Monday his father, Al, was in the Warzone boxing gym, smiling as he showed his phone. The words in the little text bubble: “I love you Pops.”

Al flies to Omaha on Thursdays and comes back to the gym on Sunday nights. Teresa has been in the Midwest since June 10, the night that her son, fighting as a featherweight, took a right hand in the face from Jose Haro, went to sleep and kept sleeping.

Daniel had two brain surgeries and was in a medically-induced coma. Marooned in a waiting room in the flatlands, watching the world move on without their son, Al and Teresa had no options besides hope and prayer. So they hoped and prayed.

Now Daniel has made such quick and glorious steps that the Francos can allow themselves to anticipate the next one. Afterthoughts are now victories.

“I’ve seen it in boxing before, I’ve seen it with friends,” said Al, who trained Daniel from the beginning. “I didn’t want to say it to my wife. But the likelihood of him coming out? I didn’t expect that.”

Daniel had stepped into the boxing ring at WinnaVegas Casino in Sloan, Iowa. He was 16-1-3, having lost his USBA featherweight title to Chris Martin in an unforeseen knockout. Now he was fighting Haro.

Al and manager Ray Chaparro look back now and see troubling signs. “Who’s faster than you, who’s bigger?” Al would ask. That was part of the pre-fight routine. Daniel kept answering yes. This time Al didn’t hear the conviction.

Haro caught Franco in the sixth round and decked him. Al kept telling Daniel to lengthen his jab, “don’t let him walk you down.” He now says he should have stopped it after the seventh round, “but that’s too easy.”

The knockout was as decisive a collision between face and right hand as you’ll ever see. The referee, Celestino Ruiz, didn’t bother counting.

Teresa, Al and Ray came into the ring. “Mom,” Daniel said, “my head hurts.” Then he lay back down. Walter Sarnoi, the paramedic the Francos brought with them, knew something was wrong.

The ambulance ride to Mercy Hospital in Sioux City, Iowa, was a half-hour, out of the cornfields. After a while the doctors brought everybody into the chapel and said Daniel would need surgery.

“Reality began to set in,” Chaparro said.

“The whole left side of his brain was a mass of blood,” Al Franco said. “Fortunately a couple of veins did their work, stopped the bleeding.”

He told Chaparro he couldn’t believe Franco was still a featherweight, considering his power. He was thinking about his own family.

Later, a cousin of Al’s brother-in-law who happened to be a neurosurgeon was in touch with the Iowa doctors, who said they had spotted small fractures in Daniel’s head that existed before the fight. One was near the orbital bone. It made sense, the way Daniel had been rubbing his head. Who knows when he got them?

“I beat myself up every day,” Chaparro said.

“Something was different,” Al Franco said. “He was too cautious that night, he wasn’t letting it go. I really think that, for some reason, he was scared.

“I had told him earlier that if he wanted to fight, he couldn’t do it part-time. As a coach I told him I wanted more out of him. As a dad, I told him he probably should go back to school. But he was in shape. He was running the mile in 5:25 over at Chaffey College. He was sparring 12 rounds against four different guys.”

Daniel went to Chaffey and had been accepted at Arizona State. He was set to study neuropsychology. RocNation, the promotional company run by Jay-Z, had taken over Daniel’s career, put him on some cards featuring Andre Ward.

The hope is that RocNation will address Al’s medical bills, which have passed the $1 million mark. There is a GoFundMe page and there have been worldwide responses.

Al sat in a metal chair and talked about the fourth night after the second surgery, when he was in Daniel’s room, staying as quiet as possible. The doctors had told the family not to wear cologne or perfume. Anything that reminded Daniel of them would start firing things in his brain, and he needed rest above all.

“But that night I was in there and I heard him whisper, ‘Pops,’” Al said.

He put his head down and his friends got him a Kleenex.

“I said, ‘OK. He’s there.’”

As Daniel slowly regained his bearings, he struggled with short-term memory. When everything got clearer, he asked, “Is Ray mad that I lost the fight?”

Daniel wears a helmet when he walks. Now he grabs it without prompting. There is a piece of his skull that still needs to be reattached. As his world returns, Daniel will inevitably talk of boxing again.

“We told the nurses that if that happens, keep pushing,” Al said. “If that motivates him, keep it up.”

German researchers in 2013, estimated an average of 10 boxers a year have died of fight consequences since 1900. There was recent talk of staging Canelo Alvarez’s fight with Gennady Golovkin in Dodger Stadium. In the last major fight there, Davey Moore died at the hands of Sugar Ramos and Gov. Pat Brown and columnist Jim Murray called for a ban on boxing.

No need to worry. Daniel Franco will not box again. His coterie will make sure he deals with that, and that he looks upon his recovery the way everyone else does, as a miracle that walks and talks and eats ice cream.